The Other Guys

Dir. Adam McKay

2010
2.0

By now, no one should be confused about what kind of a movie they're going to get from writer/director Adam McKay. His films function as wish fulfillment for Saturday Night Live devotees masochistically demanding that show's aesthetic be stretched well beyond its capacity and ignominiously retrofitted with indiscernible attempts at plot. They've been treated to a number of hit-or-miss (mostly miss) spinoff films over the years but McKay's special brand of sketch comedy indebted features manage to dodge the “spinoff” tag, the kiss of death for critical success. A former Second City member and SNL head writer, perhaps it is McKay's history as a socially minded comedian and his position as an occasional contributor to The Huffington Post that informs one of the more misguided forays into the realm of political comedy with his most recent feature The Other Guys. I wish I knew what someone like Arianna Huffington thought of Mr. McKay's pretensions of serious political commentary within this most plebian bromance.

Surely this must be a parodic farce. Following in the footstep's of last year's brilliant In the Loop and Jason Reitman's reportedly efficient condemnation of corporate decadence and emotional distance, Up in the Air, is it possible that we already have to suffer a lowest common denominator parody of the timely critiques of endemic political and corporate corruption those films proffered? Missing even the screwball sophistication of the Coen's Burn After Reading, The Other Guys is a philistine reworking of the “buddy cop” formula that is unfortunately convinced of its own nonexistent cultural criticism. Though billed as a parody, the film nails all the tropes of the genre without invention or traces of humor (as always with McKay, jokes are found between not within plot points) from the dealing-with-it-my-way psychological baggage of Mark Wahlberg's Terry Holtz or Ferrell's best good-cop-with-a-dark-past impersonation. These archetypes are only funny when they actively avoid acknowledging the thin vestments of their implausible personalities.

And avoid they do. Not just in a failed caricature of machismo defense mechanisms but in McKay's characteristic avoidance and downright fear of plot development. It's no wonder, really. His films predictably fall apart under the slightest demands of narrative. Try comparing the film's first half an hour with its last. In the first: an opening pyrotechnic-laden chase sequence (reminiscent of every action flick with a malnourished budget since the dawn of CGI) followed quickly by a frankly mind numbing series of police procedural sketches. In the last: a shootout massacre built up to by moments of “what the hell are they talking about” last minute plot points. Judging by the film's beyond-heavy-handed final credit sequence, McKay seems to think he's designed a conspiracy thriller and a scathing political satire in one laugh out loud romp of a good time. That he could be any further from the truth seems pretty much inconceivable.

McKay's conviction in satirical posturing and the pre-established precedent of a spoof comedy accounts for his blatant use of sexism and racism as tools for pandering to dick-in-hand loners and latent cynics. He makes limited attempts to account for these errors of taste but his defensive jokes are dated before they even leave the cinema's speakers. The film lobs so many softballs at easy targets, relies so heavily on Ferrell's brand of physical and verbal deadpan and comes up with so few noteworthy jokes (the best of which are a silent wrestling match at the wake of two accidentally suicidal cops and Michael Keaton's repeated references to 90s girl pop group TLC) that it's hard to believe that this is the same director who delivered the deliciously idiosyncratic Anchorman earlier this decade. That film, the cult American comedy of the last ten years just behind Superbad, had a couple of luxuries: existence outside the Appatow brand and audience expectations for McKay set just a notch below veteran disappointer Kevin Smith. That McKay can no longer cash in on these advantages certainly does not stop him from trying.

McKay's medium is sketch writing, a still under appreciated art form. The extent to which most people understand the liberties and restrictions of sketch comedy is in weekly doses of SNL. McKay writes well in short, discrete incidents but can't string his comedy (nor his drama) together sensibly in feature form. That he has tried is honorable but that he continues to make no improvement is disheartening. McKay is digging his own grave as a one trick pony. That his latest film will be the cause for a handful of guffaws is beside the point. The Other Guys shamefully prostitutes itself for easy laughs, cuts its losses and gets you out of theater before you start demanding a slide show presentation on the respective salaries of the Hollywood producers and stars involved in the kind of film so detached from its own lack of merit that it truly believes itself to be not only educational but entertaining.

Gangs of New York

Dir. Martin Scorsese
2002
7.4


Watching Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York recently, I came to appreciate–rather belatedly I must admit–certain drawbacks to the now [in]famous auteur theory. Of course, the theory itself is meant to define a director as an author of a film by highlighting thematic and stylistic motifs from the his/her output. The goal was to realize authorial preeminence within an industrial process. The consequences of an academic theory that proffers solidarity with an artist only make themselves evident much further down the line, when aged auteurs are given greater credence than their upstart contemporaries. Gangs of New York plays like a study on the inborn flaws of auteurism. Foreshadowing the narcissistic debacle of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009), Gangs is ultimately not a self contained historical epic but a Martin Scorsese Historical Epic.

Beginning a film with a vainglorious and highly orchestrated battle sequence that skews aestheticization of violence in favor of glorification via rapid editing and ill-advised, anachronistic score choice (not to be confused with the ironic audio visual juxtaposition of, for instance, Scorsese's own Mean Streets), exceeds the limitations of 'minor transgression'. It cheapens the sincerity of the entire enterprise. This imprudent tactic leaves Scorsese with a lot of ground to make up. Thankfully, the remainder of the film is rhythmically and tonally well tempered. A period drama about Irish immigrants in New York City during the mid-19th century, the film's script surreptitiously extracts dramatic plot points while moving gracefully through a compelling story. Scorsese's attention to surface details both broad and confined is simply extraordinary. His sets are towering marvels in particular the subterranean Irish tavern of the Five Points.

Scorsese has become well known for extracting memorable performances from his leads and Gangs is no exception. Daniel Day-Lewis' William “Bill the Butcher” Cutting anticipates the fire and brimstone of America's own Daniel Plainview in P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007). Cameron Diaz's Jenny Everdeane is one of Scorsese's strongest female characters and the director's most forceful indictment of the misogyny more than occasionally found in his own films. And of course there is Scorsese's muse, Leo. His understated performance as Amsterdam Vallon, the son of a slain Roman Catholic priest, stands quietly and thus all the more noticeably in the shadow of Day-Lewis' furious histrionics. The emotional territory he covers in Gangs (in particular, contradictory feelings of guilt and loyalty) would be covered again in Scorsese's magnificent The Departed (2006) but it is not the weight of the burden but the mode of coping that makes his restrained performance so affecting. His internal angst reveals itself seldom but the verisimilitude by which he conveys Vallon's psychological trauma lends his trajectory an undeniable sense of fatalism and gives his performance meaningful depth.

Then the problem is not within the superficial fabric of the film. With great performances, unparalleled art direction and a fine script, what is lacking in Gangs is found in the smallest but most unexpected errors of confidence. In particular, in two long time Scorsese collaborators: editor Thelma Schnoomaker and DP Michael Ballhaus. Both have worked with Scorsese since the 1980s and perhaps one can chock these mistakes up to hive mind mentality. Schoonmaker's editing on her first collaboration with Scorsese, Raging Bull, undoubtedly played a part in that film's critical success. In Gangs, her cutting is mostly appropriate but occasionally (as in the aforementioned battle scene) becomes an exercise in excess. Rapid alternations between POV and third person shots cause the action to be confounding and disorienting but hardly heighten the immediacy of the violence. Ballhaus' cinematography is practiced and patient. In one sublime sequence his camera outlines the entire existential journey many of the immigrant Irish will make: arriving in one boat, departing in another and finally arriving “home” in a third wooden vessel. His shots are well composed though his muted tonal palette, handsome as it is, seems calculated to meet the expectations of an American period drama. Furthermore, he occasionally injects a “Scorsese shot”, particularly favoring the dolly zoom most memorably used in Goodfellas. The technique is as tasteless here as it was brilliantly metaphysical in that film.

The fact that Gangs of New York comes embedded with Scorsesean calling cards does not render it defective but certainly has a pejorative effect. The problem is not with the motifs themselves. His ideological themes of masculinity, patriarchy, Catholic guilt and morality are adequately explored here as they are in many of his other features. However, despite the good faith by which he investigates these subjects, the sheer amount of material Scorsese attempts to cover even in a film of such girth, while incorporating ample amounts of romance and action, inevitably invites skepticism in regards to what could have been left on the cutting room floor. Scorsese's hamburger comes with everything on it effectively reducing the impact of individual flavors and textures. Each additional aspect obscures the subtleties of the others. Shifting the film's political agenda into high gear toward the finale eclipses the intricate underpinnings of the emotional relationships between the principle characters, especially Vallon and Cutting.

My last complaint is in regards to how, despite the sheer amount of creative intensity, Gangs of New York is in some ways sadly predictable. Everything about the film is entirely explicable. Scorsese opts for legend over myth and grounds his film in historical realism occasionally airing on the side of melodrama. Which is not a cinematic sin but does jive with the Scorsese's history of innovation and the film's tangible sense of self-importance. Gangs can be placed in a very broad category of historical dramas which attempt to place discrete relationships and intricate emotions, some of which are intrinsically linked to the time period, into a wider socio-political and historical context. The goal is to make the viewer aware of the likeness between what they are seeing in the “past” and what they live in their daily lives. Contemporary relevance in period films can often get over extended for the sake of viewer empathy. In doing so, some or all of the unique perspective of the time can be lost. Scorsese generally demands a lot and Gangs in particular is so saturated with detail and context that it very nearly alienates the viewer. There is much to enjoy in Gangs of New York. Still, it will never be a great film. For better or worse, it always be a Martin Scorsese film.

The Dark Knight

Dir. Christopher Nolan
2008
6.9


The problem with retrospective criticism is obvious. A film's value is dynamic. It changes over time based on a number of variables. Of particular interest here is how the quality of the films that follow it in the director's oeuvre might adversely affect an otherwise accomplished feature. For me, no two films better emphasis this dilemma than Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight and his follow up, the turgid Inception. Two years ago The Dark Knight so thrilled me that I went to see it in theaters a half dozen times. I fondly remember weeks of infatuation and discussion amongst peers. Since that time, I have tried to embrace an unyielding critical eye that will righteously recognize superficiality; not simply looking past but looking through. I admit that on occasion I have overcompensated. In my youthful attempt to aggressively assert my opinion, I may have treated some films more harshly than they perhaps deserved. I failed to exercise the discretion and rectitude I have come to respect in many of the critics I follow. I am still, it seems, in the anti-navel gazing stage of my development as a film critic.

Which makes reanalysis that much harder. Inception so negatively influenced my opinion of Christopher Nolan that I was persuaded to reevaluate what I loved so much about The Dark Knight. Much of what I initially enjoyed is still present: the orchestration of spectacle, the convincing use of archetypes as mouthpieces for oppositional philosophies, Heath Ledger's still awe inducing performance. What crops up though, which cannot be excused as projection of doubt, are various flaws which detract from the pleasure of analytical examination. Though Nolan, with the assistance of his brother Jonathan, manages to write sophisticated monologues that inform like a college lecture on the fundamentals of philosophy, he largely fails to write many characteristically human interactions. Case in point: Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes strained relationship is certainly not helped by a noteworthy lack of humanity in their conversation. As Bruce Wayne has to constantly conceal his alter ego, so too does Nolan sometimes inexplicably conceal fulness of being beneath an exterior shell of fractured identity. Though we are meant to sympathize with Bruce Wayne, the viewer is often at odds with Wayne's lack of genuinely sympathetic characteristics.

There is also the inevitable complaint about the film's structure and lack of a distinct climax. The film prefers incident over arc to power its narrative. Though, as in Inception, each setpiece heightens the film's overall intensity, the dead air between them tends to suffocate rather than extend the drama. By the end, the hazards of the film's numerous action sequences are fully divorced from the emotional drama that initially propelled them. The intensity is inexhaustible but its impact is deadened by Nolan's decision to make the whole back half of his film a climax (sound familiar?). The irony of the bathetic consequences of such an adrenally influenced decision is somehow base and transcendental. Motivations are expository and relatively clear though not necessarily simplified. Nolan designs a complex polemical web with The Dark Knight and rigorously avoids resolution of ontological dissonances. This lack of resolution is the fundamental characteristic that keeps the film from disappearing into the void of sterile action cinema. It is also the film's most well deserved plaudit.

Nolan should be lauded for taming his wild horse of a film though the fact that he is responsible for its bad behavior slightly diminishes the accomplishment. Though The Dark Knight's conclusion doesn't quite hold water it is nonetheless comforting to see a director willing to put his reputation at risk both intentionally and inadvertently. Throughout the film, Nolan juggles chainsaws and swims with killer sharks; knowing full well that his solipsism may cause him irreparable harm. If anything was evinced by Inception it was that Christopher Nolan has a dangerously high opinion of himself and his films. While that film took fewer risks than The Dark Knight and resulted in a notably smaller pay off, it cemented directorial traits one could have chosen to identify or ignore in The Dark Knight. Interviews with Nolan elicit empirical levels of conceit, misplaced confidence in his base knowledge of the world and stubborn artistic inflexibility. He is amiable but vaguely puerile in his conception of how movies should be made.

A good friend pointed out that Inception is a highly enjoyable movie to watch but does not hold up under close scrutiny. I second this notion. As for the The Dark Knight, it fairs far better but is still best enjoyed viscerally rather than academically. The film captures an insular and microcosmic world that bears more than a slight resemblance to our own. Nolan supplies his film with a largely empathetic populace: confused, naïve to the complexity of the law, bigoted and self-righteous. That so many words are minced in reference to “the people” conveys directorial accordance with the film's assertion about the unnerving lack of facility for the principles of democracy to effect change. For a film so enthusiastically involved with diametrically opposing pairs, it is disheartening that this conclusion exists without opposition. Inception left me with little hope that Nolan fully appreciates or even recognizes this subtextual insinuation. In the end we are left to wonder if the reason why Inception was such a bloody mess was because Christopher Nolan amputated himself in some indelible way with The Dark Knight.

Inception

This review was originally published here on Tiny Mix Tapes

Dir. Christopher Nolan
2010
2.5


Since seeing Christopher Nolan's Inception for the first time more than two weeks ago I have cycled through a series of feelings from glossy eyed amazement to utter contempt to cool irony and finally plain disappointment. I've settled on disappointment because I think it is the most judicial of all emotions one could possibly feel about a film like Inception and its director Christopher Nolan. Nolan came from a modest, innovative background in the early years of this past decade and has built steadily toward envelope-pushing studio productions. His films are enjoyable and thought provoking due to their characteristic combination of confident spectacle and earnest intelligence. They are introverted and textually interact almost exclusively with themselves although they are capable of being read widely. Up until now, Nolan has seemed uninterested in his place amongst heavy hitting filmmakers. Unexpectedly, it is pretense and a cocksure attitude about the ideological content of big budget blockbusters that causes Inception to feel disingenuous and insecure. Those same characteristics are also utilized to dismiss contemporary Hollywood cinema as vapid and insincere. Ironically, this pretentious attitude is the reason Inception has risen to levels of extreme, undeserved recognition amongst viewers and critics.

Inception represents the zeitgeist of popular American cinema. So saturated by dainty romantic comedies, predictable slasher reboots and disingenuous, market driven sequels even a humble version of Inception's high concept psychological thriller could have attracted a wealth of attention. However, modesty is not the strong suit of summer blockbusters. Inception is no exception with immodesty becoming the genesis of innumerable gestures that cause the film to be both absurdly entertaining and gratingly insufferable. At every step the film overcompensates as best exemplified by the relentlessly brooding score that places a dramatic emphasis on even the most stale bites of dialog as if to suggest that every miniscule detail is of the utmost importance. Bloated and self-congratulatory, Inception eventually becomes unwieldy and ends as an absolute mess. Nolan's previous film, The Dark Knight, was also something of a mess, albeit a mostly endearing one. That film opted for noir polemics over, say, the dialectics of Westerns or as the Joker said best “an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object.” The effect was undeniably disabling. While not everyone appreciated the choice, Nolan took a big risk that delivered in the form of one of the most talked about films of 2008.

With Inception, Nolan largely abandons his history of challenging polemics in favor of a manipulative and highly unethical cinema of distraction. After an expository opening half burdened by malnourished jargon and an obligatory chase sequence, the film succumbs to trope after action film trope, dismembering and condensing three genre films into one. The back half of the film is a four-tiered reverse-heist complete with kidnapping, car chase, Matrix-esque zero gravity fight scenes and vintage 007 extreme sport killing sprees. Not surprisingly, this initially thrilling setpiece so lacks self-restraint that it eventually becomes inane. Nolan gets so caught up in his action film purism and the complexity of his interrelated mechanisms that his screenplay falls into film limbo; drama and action drifting around purposelessly. I suppose one could sardonically praise Nolan for designing a film that adheres to self-made dream logic.

What Nolan should not be praised for, however, is designing a consistent or meaningful film. While the film's action is occasionally engaging the actors who take part in it are almost entirely vacant. Nolan's characters lack any kind of depth. Even Dominic Cobb (Dicaprio), who receives most of the screenplays enervated emotional energy, is an archetype of very plain proportions. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Arthur is a snoozy stiff. The capacity of Ellen Page's Ariadne to perceive the very obvious signs of Cobb's psychological damage seems to indicate that on some level Nolan realizes that his characters are flimsy and uninteresting. This is all pretty predictable fair from Nolan. He seems to relish using actors who can't fulfill the basic needs of their characters. With the exception of Marion Cotillard as the underdeveloped but still deeply disturbing vision of Cobb's deceased wife Mal, the remainder of the characters are more Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes than Joker or Leonard Shelby. Noteworthy is Wally Pfister's cinematography which is even better than it was in The Dark Knight. Here he gives action sequences room to breathe and deftly captures Inception's surrealist universe. Its just too bad Nolan's subconscious didn't populate this cinematic dream world with less clunky projections.

Pauline Kael once said of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (both the film and its director have likely been of some great influence on Christopher Nolan) "If big film directors are to get credit for doing badly what others have been doing brilliantly for years with no money, just because they've put it on a big screen, then businessmen are greater than poets and theft is art." Though ripe for commentary and conversation, Inception is a deeply flawed film. Shooting to be mind blowingly great, it ends up just OK. Not nearly as audacious as folks have made it out to be, Inception is the kind of self-important art that preys on the insecurities of its patrons. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised as Nolan takes his film's psychological premise to its most literal extreme, doing to his audience exactly what Cobb and his gang do to poor Robert Fischer: implant a simple idea in the most elaborate and lavish way possible. Nolan's simple idea? That Inception is a film worth getting excited over and believing in. That idea has taken hold amongst many but remains, just as in the film, an immoral coercion of our emotions and ego.